


Zaheer Appreciation Week Drabbles

by RhazadeWaterbender



Series: Red Lotus Appreciation Weeks 2015 [4]
Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Red Lotus, Red Lotus appreciation weeks, Zaheer Appreciation Week, rated T for weeablew getting raked across the coals, what a windbag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-02
Packaged: 2018-04-27 05:49:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 1,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5036209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RhazadeWaterbender/pseuds/RhazadeWaterbender
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And we wrap up Red Lotus Appreciation weeks with...<i>this windbag</i>.   (Verbose aerokineticist; get it?)  May contain implied violence, wangst, and P'heer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Day 1:  Childhood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our story begins with a farmboy in the Earth Kingdom.

History will revile the man—or, at its most flattering, name him a misled idealist.  The boy, however—unruly black hair, unmarked face, guileless eyes—is no one of any consequence as yet.  And for now, he's happy: After all, he met a divinity incarnate just a day ago...and came away from the meeting with the reassurance that even an ordinary boy, with no command of any element, can still make his mark upon the world.

Two years from now, his older brother will be forcibly conscripted, and blight will ravage the amaranth-millet crop.  The following year, his younger brother will fall ill and never recover, and his mother be arrested for an act of despair.  A month later, his father—strong swimmer though he is—will be found face-down in the river.

Two years from now, the first seeds of what he will become will take root.  But the boy, for now, is blissfully unaware.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It appears that I can only give half a damn about Zaheer as a character if I'm either raking him over the coals or writing P'heer...and at this point in the story, he hasn't even _met_ P'Li yet.  If the description of kid!Zaheer invokes an image straight out of [IsisT's baby!Red Lotus fan art](http://polapaz321.tumblr.com/post/121971291044/happy-dragon-boat-festival), that was entirely deliberate.  And again, I decided to run with a suggestion I received: namely, that he might have met Aang in his youth, and that the encounter might—however ultimately ironically—have given him ideas.


	2. Day 2:  Guru Laghima

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was my attempt to put some _explanation_ to Zaheer's fanboyism.

The book had already been old when his mother—who'd likely have been a scholar, had circumstances gone in her favor—had inherited it from her grandfather.  When the queen's soldiers come for her, it's left behind.

The boy starts reading it, at first, because the poetry—all imagery of flight and heights and gale winds—reminds him of his mother...of whom there's never again any word.  When he ultimately has to leave the farm, he takes it with him.

It's not until later that he learns that the author was a man from a culture which, in the centuries since, has been reduced to a tiny and nearly-assimilated remnant.  A figure of some controversy within that culture.  And someone who'd emerged all the stronger from losses of his own.

For all that he knows that their experiences aren't the same, he wishes he could have _met_ the poet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kind of running with my earlier description of him as "bookish."


	3. Day 3:  Earthly Tether

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And this is a dose of what I'm sure everyone's been waiting for: some P'heer!  (Well, proto-P'heer, anyway.)

Everyone he's ever loved is dead, or at least gone from his life and unlikely to return.  He's become inured to the awful things that people do to one another.  But his discovery—while trying to rob some rich creep's storehouse—that the rich creep's “artillery” he's been warned about is a fifteen-year-old girl kept locked in a shed...for that, he can muster absolutely _no_ dispassion, only outrage.

First, he earns her trust.  A few more midnight raids on the rich creep's estate for no reason other than to learn her name, catch her up on the basics of what she's missed in the six years she's been held captive, and just generally _talk_ to her suffice.  He suspects it's the only positive human contact she's _had_ in those six years that haven't come bundled with some ulterior motive.

Then, he starts to formulate a plan to help her escape.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, this _is_ directly connected to some of [P'Li's](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4793165/chapters/10969235) and [Ghazan's](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4979410/chapters/11506399) chapters.


	4. Day 4:  Scars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There was no way that I was going to leave this at _physical_ scars.

Every bruise, every split lip, every boxed ear and bloodied nose has been a lesson, as far as he's concerned.  A learning experience.  The same can be said of the lacerated forehead—earned during the rescue of the sniper—that had healed badly in the absence of more than the most cursory treatment, leaving a visible gap through the center of his left eyebrow.

He's made a _point_ of treating them as such, after all.  Evade, feint, learn to read his opponents before they strike.  And it's not as if any physical wound has ever hurt the way it did when his world came crashing down around him, leaving no one to help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Short and sweet" isn't quite the word for this one. "Brief and brutal," maybe?


	5. Day 5:  Void

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Because I suspect that I haven't been cruel enough this week.

They've put him in an oubliette and chained him to the floor.  He can still levitate, but only to the level of less than his own height. It's been made clear to him that even if anyone with the capability and inclination to rescue him still lived, they'd have no chance of finding him.

He's sure he should be devastated; instead, he's numb.  He's scarcely able to care, even, that... _that girl_...has had the temerity to survive when the sniper is ash, the healer and the sandbender buried under a mountain.

 _The sniper_.  Any surfacing memory—guarded brown eyes softening, a long golden hand clasping his own, a husky contralto voice murmuring his name—is enough to sink him to the cold floor.

He can't entirely banish her from his mind.  But at the same time, he can't bring himself to think about her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember how I said that to give half a damn about Zaheer, I either have to write P'heer or rake him over the coals? There's no "or" to this.


	6. Day 6:  Spirit World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He's still a badass-normal at this point.

Retreating into the other realm has become his solace.  

At first, he tries to contact anyone who can help.  His contact in the steel city has a cover that can't be blown.  And as for the northerner...his treachery reveals itself soon enough.  The strategist bitterly regrets having trusted a _politician_ , connection to the Avatar or no.  

Cold winds and clouds accompany him for weeks afterward.  

While the other two have either no real skill at or inclination towards the deeper spiritual aspects, the sniper—perhaps due to some factor of her anomalous light chakra—is another matter, for all that it still perhaps frightens her a bit.  Knowing that circumstance would drive her to quickly overcome any trepidation, he searches for her. 

His hope stills the wind and clears the sky.  But he never finds the sniper.  He knows that she wouldn't willfully abandon him; therefore, it must be that she's being kept restrained even in _that_ capacity.  Any alternative is unbearable.  

Eventually, he takes to exploring for the purpose of self-education alone.  The fanged, many-eyed crawling entity with the single glowing antenna—who trees him once to berate him in a voice incongruously akin to an unsettling distortion of the healer's—is jealous of her territory and to be avoided; the eerie fog-thing lurking over the valley may come in handy, but should likewise be given a wide berth.  The library...is no longer safe.  

It scarcely occurs to him that his hair is now more gray than black, or his trim solid frame—for all that he exercises as well as he can to keep his strength up—pared spare by privation.  There's no way for him to keep track of time.  And the other realm...is unconcerned with such things. 

One day, something shrouds the world in an eerie sullen glow; the sentries are agitated.  The strategist knows what this means, and suspects that the northerner has made a catastrophic error.  Later meditation confirms as much. 

A week later, a cold draft vexatiously creeps through some gap in the metal cell.  

Almost instinctively, he deflects it.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> P'Li had at least _some_ spiritual aptitude, and you will not convince me otherwise.  And yes, I _did_ foreshadow like hell and lampshade the spider spirit having the same VA as Ming-Hua.


	7. Day 7:  Relationships

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some P'heer, some sorrow.

While living by his wits, he meets a gawky, knobby-kneed girl who's being exploited as a weapon for the rare talent she possesses; that can't be allowed to stand.  While planning to help her escape, he meets a sandbending street kid with a talent just as rare, who belts him across the jaw over the plan failing to survive first contact but nonetheless insists on sticking around.  While competing in one of a string of underground fighting pits—the pay, while unreliable, is decent enough and tends to help out—he meets a resourceful little backup healer, hired less than an hour before the fight, who has nowhere else to go.

One evening, the latter two—the healer deadpan and cryptic, the sandbender boy slightly gleeful—inform him that the sniper wants to talk to him.

He finds her corner of the hideout lit by candles and redolent of fire lilies.  The sniper herself—who, at some point since they first met, has gone from gawky to elegant—awaits him clad only in a crimson silk dressing gown which, perhaps predictably, is a bit too short for her.

The effect is somewhat lost when she blushes so violently that her lurid facial tattoo nearly vanishes.  Later, they'll both look back on that with amusement.

Still later, he will look back on that—the brightest point of his life—with woe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My typical desire to _not_ go romantic with this theme fought my desire to write P'heer for this particular chapter, and lost.  I did, however, still manage to slip in _some_ interactions with Ming-Hua and Ghazan.


End file.
